


No, No, and No

by skybone



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Character Development, Cluelessness, Developing Relationship, F/F, Fluff and Smut, Not Canon Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-07
Updated: 2015-03-07
Packaged: 2018-03-16 18:39:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3498794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skybone/pseuds/skybone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was ridiculous. She hated not understanding. She hated the fact that she could not discipline these strange, illogical reactions away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No, No, and No

**Author's Note:**

> All righty then… A different Inquisitor from last time, but still her paladin. Cassandra’s “this does not compute” moment. (Okay, it’s just a LITTLE bit exaggerated.)

It had been a long, wet day on the Storm Coast, and Cassandra was tired and a little chilled. She pulled back the flap of the tent she shared with the Inquisitor—after all this time still slightly scandalized by Lavellan's absolute refusal while on expeditions to accept a solitary tent with accoutrements suitable to her station—and stepped inside. The Inquisitor was already there, sitting on her bedroll, her back to the entry, oiling her daggers with a dirty rag.

Lavellan had spread her gear to dry and stripped down to an old undershirt that was thin with washing and didn't cover much of her to begin with. Cassandra saw the knobs of her spine, delicately outlined against the strained cloth, the curve of the line they made leading downward, and felt a sudden jolting arrow of arousal in her belly. Her legs felt untrustworthy. She muttered something about checking supplies and retreated from the tent.

She didn't go far, simply stood breathing in the cold wet air for a few minutes and feeling the rain on her face and trying to regain some measure of self control and clear her confused thoughts.

Cassandra was not an innocent. She had had relations, very satisfactory relations, thank you, with a man. And although that had been some years ago—Maker, how many years ago had it been?—she was not unfamiliar with more… solitary… pleasures. She knew exactly what this feeling was.

She was accustomed to thinking of such sensations as something like a minor, slightly irritating _itch_. Such itches were pleasant to scratch, but they were transitory and would go away if inappropriate timing required that they be ignored. The romantic stories she read were a convenient and appropriately discreet source of sensation, enjoyable not just for their plot lines—but it was a long time since she'd felt more than a faint tickle in response to another person.

And this was not a minor itch. This was a bolt that had been almost shattering in its intensity, one that left aftershocks. What she intensely wanted, right _now_ , was to find somewhere private where she could—

No, no, and no.

This was... disconcerting.

And of course there was also the unsettling question of the source. Cassandra was not interested in women. She never had been. She had pre-emptively turned aside the Inquisitor's attention some months previously, partly because it would be an inappropriate liaison—the Inquisitor was her leader, after all—but primarily because the Inquisitor was a woman and Cassandra was not interested in women.

She was quite certain that she was still not interested in women. Women who liked women… liked breasts. Breasts were perfectly nice things, she thought, but, for her, not a source of, er, excitement. She was not interested in Lavellan's breasts, charming as they might be. She did not respond to Lavellan's breasts. Did she? She thought about them. They were small, which was helpful from the point of view of fighting; larger breasts could get in the way unless one had well designed armour. But Lavellan's breasts were also well formed and classically attractive, so if she was attracted to women she should certainly respond to them...? No. Nothing.

Her own breasts, of course, were a different matter, and she quite liked having attention paid to them. She imagined long slender fingers touching—

No, no, and no.

*          *          *

By the time she returned to the tent the Inquisitor was safely in her bedroll, but her response to that view of Lavellan's spine rattled Cassandra. She must have misunderstood her own reactions. Over the next few days she found herself occasionally imagining that shadowed line, trying to retrieve the experience so that she could analyze it. She felt faint echoes, but was unable to revisit the memory exactly.

She wasn't sure if it was a good or a bad thing that her timing so rarely allowed her to actually view the Inquisitor's spine, despite the fact that they shared a tent.

Breasts, however, were more accessible. Or at least more visible, if not exactly revealed. At intervals she contemplated Lavellan's breasts and found herself unmoved by them. This was reassuring. Apart from that one occasion when the Inquisitor caught her staring and raised an eyebrow, and she felt herself go bright red. She was careful thereafter to keep her surveillance more... surreptitious.

(She was not sure she was being quite subtle enough after Varric remarked somewhat suggestively during a bawdy discussion of what made men and women attractive, that had somehow turned into an argument about favourite foods, that he was certain the Seeker craved melons in winter. But given that it was Varric, who delighted in plaguing her, it was probably a coincidence.)

None of it made sense to her. But being both stubborn and persistent when facing a challenge, she was determined to understand what had happened. Over the next few days she examined all her reactions to the Inquisitor so closely that any natural response to Lavellan would have been strangled at birth. But she still could not make sense of what had happened, no matter how she worried at it.

After a few days, heartened by her failure to respond to Lavellan's breasts, she began to relax. This must have just been one of those things, a random if intense physical arousal that had nothing to do with what was around her. Perhaps she had been reading too many of her favourite novels recently, certainly some were explicit, and sometimes... varied... in their subject matter. Likely her mind had thrown up an erotic image without her even really noticing it. Clearly it had nothing to do with Lavellan.

So, of course, when she found herself transfixed by the Inquisitor's wrists a few days later, she was again completely blindsided.

*          *          *

It had been in the practice yard. She was watching Lavellan spar with Krem, and suddenly noticed how slender her wrists were, how delicate and precise. She could wrap her fingers right around one of those wrists, she was sure, and she was watching the small muscles and tendons in the Inquisitor’s forearm shift as she skillfully spun her blades, noticing how assertive those wrists were despite their apparent fragility, and thinking that she wanted to tap Krem on the shoulder and demand his place in the dance. She wanted to wrap her fingers around one of those wrists and—and then she abruptly realized that there was what felt almost like an electrical charge drifting across her skin in familiar and unwelcome ways.

No, no, and no.

“Good wrist action,” said Bull approvingly, coming up from behind and making her jump. “Lot of power there, though it doesn't look it. She looks like she'd break in a stiff breeze, but she's strong. You can see it in the way she moves her daggers. She's got the power _and_ the control. Could probably lift even you off your feet, Seeker, with the right moves.”

“Indeed,” managed Cassandra. 

Bull gave her a sly, sidelong smile, and moved off to harass his Chargers. Cassandra remembered that she needed some information on armour requisitions from Josephine, _urgently_ needed it, and hurried away to find the Ambassador.

*          *          *

She no longer stared at Lavellan's breasts. No, now she seemed to be obsessively watching her joints. This was ridiculous. Other people reacted to—to breasts, and bulges. Not to the fine tendons of a _wrist_. There must be something wrong with her.

She could not understand her reactions. She had read in some of her romances about people with fetishes. Was it possible that she had developed a fetish? She had no urge toward the activities that those books referenced, so perhaps not.

Had she reacted to Galyan so... physically? To his body parts? She couldn't remember, it had been so long ago. She probably had, she had been very young, and the young had just discovered sex and reacted to _everything_. She remembered the rasp of stubble on his jaw, uncomfortable, but that wasn't the same thing. She remembered certain things about his body very clearly, though usually relating to particular moments spent with him. This made sense. She remembered his hands. Of course, these were the things one _would_ remember, the things one would notice and react to, the moments of joy and the things that gave pleasure. Hands.

Not spines and joints.

She should not have started thinking about hands. The Inquisitor had elegant hands, and they were attached to her wrists.

She attempted to think of Galyan's hands instead. But it was all too long ago, and the image was unclear, and the fingers in her imagination were long and slender instead of large and sturdy. Standing on guard late at night she thought of her own hand circling another's wrist as those other fingers moved on her, and shivered.

No, no, and no.

*          *          *

Perhaps her reactions, however inexplicable, were simply to particular bits of anatomy. If so, she would surely react to other spines, other wrists. During one meeting to discuss the strategic use of magical tactics she stared at Vivienne's beautiful, rigid back. Not a flicker. Well, male spines and wrists would be more likely to incite arousal, given her preferences. She set out to test this theory. She watched the men more closely, evaluating her responses to them. Dorian's spine was exceedingly fine and his wrists were delightful, but they stirred nary a twinge. (Which, on the whole, was a very good thing, she thought rather dazedly.) One never had a chance to see Cullen's spine under all that fur, but he did have strong wrists. Blackwall had strong arms as well, but in his case there was a significant amount of fur on his wrists, which she found unattractive. Iron Bull's spine was proudly on display but dwarfed by the magnificence of his flesh, and his wrists were the size of her thighs, which was more than slightly intimidating. She did not bother evaluating Cole, who was disturbingly non-human, Solas, who was disturbingly inclined to philosophize, or Varric, who was disturbingly irritating.

None of them, ultimately, had the least effect on her. This was almost as upsetting as her initial reaction to the Inquisitor. She _should_ be reacting to them. Well, no, she shouldn't, they were professional associates and it would be inappropriate, but in principle... If a woman that she was _uninterested_ in had anatomical bits that aroused her, surely the same would apply to men, who actually were potential mates. But none stirred the slightest twitch in her loins. The effect seemed localized to the Inquisitor.

Drinking with her companions in the tavern, she tried desperately to find something erotic in other bodies, other actions. But it was only Lavellan. And consistently Lavellan. The strain of cloth across her back when she reached for a card while they played Wicked Grace, or the tilt of her wrist raising a tankard, roused something fierce and tender and insistent that quite undid Cassandra. She could not understand it.

She _hated_ not understanding. She _hated_ the fact that she could not discipline these strange, illogical reactions away. She gritted her teeth and decided that it was some oddity in her personality that she would simply have to live with. And when she watched Lavellan’s back, as she so often did when on patrol and she was acting as bodyguard—

No, no, and no.

*          *          *

Cassandra had known she would hate the ball at the Winter Palace, and she was not disappointed in her expectations. She hated the Game, and this was the climax of its manifestation; she was surrounded by expert players, self-satisfied and narcissistic. She did not do well with the inherent duplicity; the press of falsity in these people both angered and depressed her.

She tensely watched the Grand Duchess Florianne dance with the Inquisitor, beautiful and arrogant and deadly, and in fury wished she could strike her hands away; she did not like having Lavellan within the reach of that dangerous woman. And through it all, laughing shallow men and women insisted on trying to speak with her, just because she was the Right Hand of the Divine and from the line of Nevarran royalty, however far removed, and therefore a prize in their games of status. Their importunate rambling distracted her from her self-imposed duty as bodyguard. It was enraging.

She had been very well-behaved, on the whole. Her scowl and refusal to speak had eventually put most of them off. She had not knocked down the twittering fool who blethered on about how beautiful the Inquisitor was, despite very much wanting to, and had instead looked down her nose at him with her most arrogant expression and pointed out in the pompous tones appropriate to the afore-mentioned Right Hand of the Divine that his station relative to the Herald of Andraste was, effectively, below contempt. She had waited until she was alone—she thought—before letting her anger and frustration take physical form. The damage was minor and could easily be repaired by a plasterer.

Cassandra had wanted to leave even before they arrived, so by the time the events of the evening had finished unfolding her patience was entirely at an end. Fighting assassins and the Duchess had dissipated some of her frustration, but not enough, and the final resolution to the question of who would rule Orlais was not one she much liked, though she could see the political logic behind it. At least it was finally settled. Lavellan disappeared some time after all the facile speeches, while Cassandra was distracted. But the Inquisitor was only out on the balcony. No need to panic.

“I can’t believe you escaped before me,” she said, joining Lavellan. “A fat count insisted on talking about soup for fifteen minutes.” She leaned on the railing. “We can return to Skyhold whenever you like,” she said. “The sooner the better.”

The Inquisitor didn't respond, and she looked at Lavellan more closely. She looked... drained. “Is something wrong?”

“I'm just worn out. Tonight has been... very long.”

That was certainly an understatement. “It was a lot of foolishness,” said Cassandra, and then, hoping to offer comfort, “But we did strike a blow against Corypheus... We will need to put the soldiers at Skyhold on alert. Better to be safe.” Perhaps this was not so comforting after all.

“Wait,” said the Inquisitor suddenly. “There _is_ one thing we must do before we go.” Cassandra stood up, waiting for instructions. But instead, Lavellan smiled at her. “May I have this dance, Lady Cassandra?” She offered her hand with a mocking theatrical flourish quite appropriate for an Orlesian ball.

“A dance!” said Cassandra, somewhat taken aback, but also amused by the other woman's bravado in the face of her evident fatigue. “After all we've been through tonight?”

“Can you think of a better way to celebrate?” said Lavellan.

Cassandra blinked. It was true, she did love to dance, although it was something she rarely had the opportunity to do and certainly had not done tonight. She danced well; she had initially regarded learning the intricate steps as excellent training for more useful pursuits, but she had eventually learned to love dancing for itself. Perhaps it would take the taste of the evening from her mouth. She found herself smiling slightly and accepted Lavellan's hand. “I suppose this isn't... terrible.”

The music was for an old dance, newly in fashion again, precise in its steps and highly stylized. Partners did not touch closely; they circled, wheeled, touching, parting, touching again. Cassandra, following the formal steps, abruptly realized that she would be required to place her hand in the small of the Inquisitor's back, and felt light-headed. She touched, felt bone and warmth and deep muscles shifting under her palm, and then felt Lavellan's hand on the small of _her_ back. She stumbled, lost the steps, and stood red-faced.

Well, at least her clumsiness explained her colour. “I am sorry—” she began, but the Inquisitor only laughed at her and held out her hand.

“Start again.”

So she did.

The dance finally ended. Cassandra stood stiffly. Her whole body seemed alight, her palms tingled, and she could hardly bear the touch of the stiff brocade on her uniform. Lavellan was standing very close to her. She was smiling slightly, a small, crooked smile with a touch of lightness in it that had not been there before. “Thank you,” she said.

“I am sorry for my clumsiness,” said Cassandra. “You should have had a much more graceful partner.”

“I am happy with the partner I had,” said Lavellan, and turned away, still smiling, into the Grand Ballroom to join the others as they gathered to leave.

Cassandra stared after her wordlessly. How could touching someone's spine during a dance—a spine!—undo her so thoroughly that she wanted desperately to pull the Inquisitor into the nearest empty room and run her hands up and down her back and— She could have understood and accepted an erotic attraction to breasts, had she been attracted to women. _That_ would be rational. But a _spine_ —to react so intensely to such an innocent stimulus could not be normal. This was very bad.

No, no, and no.

*          *          *

The Inquisitor seemed somewhat distracted after the events at Halamshiral, but that was hardly surprising; the political implications of the events there were significant. She was caught up in meeting after meeting, it seemed, and Cassandra had her own issues to deal with, having heard that she was under consideration as a candidate to be the next Divine. This meant that she had meetings of her own with the Chantry’s representatives. She wasn't sure how she felt about her nomination; she could see reasons both in favour of and against her candidacy, and after an evening spent in prayer that resulted in no clear conclusions, resolved to put thinking about it aside for the time being. 

For whatever the reasons, for a few days she saw very little of Lavellan. On the one occasion when she came to the tavern for a game of Wicked Grace the Inquisitor lost abysmally, to the point where Varric remarked that she was playing almost as badly as the Seeker, which annoyed both of them. Clearly Lavellan had a great deal on her mind, and Cassandra expected that she would see little of her for some time.

She was therefore taken completely by surprise as she sat at her table late at night, five days later, when she heard a throat cleared on the stairs leading up to her loft above the armoury, and lifted her head from the book she was reading by candlelight to see Lavellan. It had been one of the more risqué and absorbing volumes in her collection, embarrassingly, and between her concentration on the story and the racket the armourers made working she had not heard the Inquisitor approach.

“How can you sleep through this?” Lavellan asked incredulously, gesturing over the railing toward the glow that came from the fires of the forges below.

Cassandra blinked at her, puzzled. “Have you never noticed it before?”

“I haven’t been here at night, so I hadn’t thought of it,” said the Inquisitor.

Cassandra shrugged. “It doesn’t bother me. I have grown used to it.” Though it _was_ a little louder than usual tonight; there was a substantial order that needed filling, and therefore more people working.

Lavellan opened her mouth, then shut it again as if she’d thought better of what she was going to say, and finally said, “I saw your light.”

“Could you not sleep?” The Inquisitor shook her head. “Perhaps this will help,” said Cassandra, reaching for a bottle of old brandy and two chipped glasses that she had retrieved from a midden because they were still perfectly functional, and pouring them each a helping. The Inquisitor sat down on the other rickety chair, took a sip and sighed. They sat in comfortable silence for a moment, listening to the sound of hammers on metal.

“The Keeper of my clan sent a letter,” Lavellan said abruptly. “She wishes me to leave my duties with the Inquisition for a short time, to return home and marry.” She stood restlessly and walked to the railing to look down on the armourers working below.

Cassandra suddenly found that she was standing as well, and that there was no air in her lungs. “That—will set a cat amongst the political pigeons.”

The Inquisitor frowned and looked at her sidelong. “I have no intention of returning to marry anyone. She wishes me to marry simply so that I will bear children for the clan. The Dalish are sadly... reduced, and the Keepers wish to keep all of our bloodlines alive. But I have cousins with many children, and I see no reason for _my_ particular bloodline to continue at her whim. I do not accept the Keeper’s right to demand of me that I bear a child.

“Understand,” she said deliberately, walking back toward the table, "if there was someone among the Dalish I wished to marry—which there is _not_ —I would return to do so. I would not allow your ‘political pigeons’ or the requirements of my position to prevent me from doing so, if it was what I truly wanted.

“I do not accept the right of the nobles or anyone else to insist that I marry someone for _their_ reasons,” she said with unexpected intensity. “I do not and I will not accept the right of anyone to determine where I set my heart.” She picked up her glass, tossed back the substantial amount of brandy that was still in it and turned to the Seeker, who stood startled by her sudden vehemence.

“Cassandra,” she said hesitantly, “I—you—” She stopped and swallowed, and Cassandra realized that the Inquisitor, usually so self-contained and confident, was... unsettled? Lavellan stared at the Seeker for a moment and then seemed to pull herself together, taking a breath. “You told me that you could not accept my affection because of my position. I hope you see why I cannot accept that as a good reason. But you also told me that it was... because I was a woman, and that… is something I must accept. But sometimes... in the past weeks...” She hesitated. “I have thought that you might have changed your mind. If that is not so, tell me and I will never speak of it again.”

Cassandra automatically opened her mouth to say, “I cannot,” and found herself utterly dumbstruck, caught between a stubborn conviction that had begun to seem tattered and foolish and the truth her body was shouting at her. She simply stared at Lavellan.

The pause after the Inquisitor's question lengthened until it became evident that Cassandra was not going to say anything. Lavellan's pale eyes changed, darkening. She took a step forward, suddenly very close. She put up a hand and stroked Cassandra's cheek, and the Seeker felt her nostrils flare like those of a startled horse. She could not have moved to save her life.

“I think, Seeker, that I would like to kiss you,” Lavellan was saying. Cassandra swallowed hard. “If you wish me to stop you have only to tell me,” whispered the Inquisitor, and leaned forward.

She should say _something_. Her lips parted and no sound at all came out. The Inquisitor's lips were very close, and then they were on hers, and oh maker they were soft and sweet and her kiss was brandy and flowers and stars and very, very thorough. All of Cassandra’s muscles shivered and every inch of her skin announced that it was alive. She put her arms round the Inquisitor and felt the shape of love against her.

_This_. The thought was a bolt that made her breathing rough. She felt… illuminated. This was what she wanted. Not some untethered bit of flesh, not just a spine, but the tender strong vulnerability of a back curving and cradled beneath her hands, the shift and play of the muscles moving under her palms and a body pressed against hers.

The whole, not the part. The person. This person. _This_.

Lavellan had not stopped kissing her, and her hands were roaming, stroking her neck, her shoulders, her arms, her breasts. Cassandra was thankful that the place they were standing was invisible from the ground floor—at least she fervently hoped it was, because she was too far gone to protest being pushed against the wall and slowly, comprehensively, touched. She did not want to protest, quite the contrary. It was all far too slow, and she seriously thought she might go mad with frustration: there was too much clothing in the way, and she wanted to feel skin on hers. She wanted— _now_. She made a strangled sound that was part growl and part groan and caught the Inquisitor’s wrist—her fingers really could circle round it easily, some distracted part of her noticed—and pulled Lavellan’s hand between her legs.

Lavellan went very still for a moment. Her hand was pressed against Cassandra, who felt molten under it. And then the hand was moving, and the Seeker gasped, her hips twitching forward involuntarily. She didn't know why she'd thought Lavellan's wrists were delicate. They were silverite, they were dragonbone. Lavellan’s hand moved away, alarmingly, but only to fumble at the buttons on her breeches, loosening them, then sliding beneath the fabric and against flesh, and Cassandra, helpless, thrust hard against her fingers, biting her lip to force herself to silence, though Maker knew the armourers were mostly deaf and why was she thinking about this anyway? Her legs abruptly would no longer support her, but Lavellan held her, steadied her against the wall, until the aftershocks were past and she could stand on her own again, albeit shakily.

The Inquisitor, who had evidently oriented herself to what was important in Cassandra’s sparsely furnished quarters, tugged her up the stairs toward the bedroll in the darkest corner of the upper level of the loft. They fell onto it laughing breathlessly, and—

“Ow.”

“What—?”

There was someone already in the bedroll. Cassandra recoiled violently and shot to her feet, pulling the other woman with her. The person in the bedroll didn’t move. “Be careful,” said Cassandra urgently, retreating and pushing Lavellan back, away from the danger. She ran quickly back down the stairs, trying to fasten her breeches, to seize a candle from the table and her sword from where it leaned against the wall.

It was not a person. It was one of the training dummies, tucked cozily beneath the blankets. A training dummy with “INKY” crudely lettered on the head. On top of it was a book of poetry—one that she recognized as being particularly florid—and a few wilted flowers. Cassandra shut her eyes and wondered if it was possible to die of mortification.

She heard a strangled sound and opened her eyes again. “Oh, _ma vhenan_ ,” whispered Lavellan, a little too obviously trying to stifle laughter, “I think others may have seen more than you did.” Cassandra looked down, feeling the tips of her ears flame. Was Lavellan mocking her? The Inquisitor saw her face and sobered a bit, though a smile still teased the edges of her lips, and reached out to touch the Seeker's cheek gently. “But truthfully, I do not know whether she figured it out by watching you—or by watching me.”

It was all right, then.

They pulled the dummy out of the bedroll and pushed it to one side. The pad of straw ticking did not make a wide mattress, but it was big enough for two who wanted to be close, two who fell onto it together, fumbling at clothing and trying very hard to be quiet. As quiet as was possible under the circumstances, at least. Eventually the clothing fell away and they lay wrapped together, smiling at each other.

Cassandra, who once committed to something committed herself utterly and without reservation, looked at the woman lying beside her and watched the faint light of the candle play over her face and her crooked smile. She suddenly wished she could have done this all properly, instead of so abruptly and carelessly; there would have been courting, and she would have given Lavellan flowers, and they would have read poetry to each other, and there would have been more than one cheap candle, and no armourers in the room below. This was not properly romantic.

_But Lavellan came to me_ , she thought then, _not knowing if I would turn her away. I have courage for some things, but I do not know if I could have been so brave. She came here, accepting the dirt and the noise, for me. She touches me, and I can see how it shakes her, how it rouses her, how she gives herself fully. It is for me. And I know that I would give her anything, that I wish to give her everything._

She would trade all of the poetry, the candles, the flowers, for this moment of Lavellan smiling at her in a shabby room. And really, what could be more romantic than that?

She looked at the Inquisitor, soft and shadowed in the candlelight. Her breasts were beautiful, meant to be touched, and she intended to touch them, as often as possible. And the gentle rise of the Inquisitor’s belly begged for caresses. Her arms and legs were long-muscled and smooth, she could almost feel the skin under her palm. Her—

“Cassandra,” said Lavellan hoarsely, “if you do not touch me soon I will not be responsible for what I do.”

Oh. _Yes_.

Lavellan’s breasts were firm and soft at the same time, and fitted her hands perfectly, and then her mouth. She could hear the Inquisitor’s breathing, rough and unsteady, felt hands in her hair. She wondered how she had ever been so unmoved by Lavellan’s breasts, and knew she would never be unmoved again. Attending to them was a very pleasant way indeed to spend time, a way that had rekindled a deep fire. She could spend hours like this, if there were not so many other places to explore.

But suddenly the Inquisitor stiffened.

“Something,” said Lavellan, “is touching me. And it’s not you.”

Cassandra’s head shot up as she rolled over, and she had a panicked moment of thinking, _Cole_ , but no, Cole’s curiosity might lead him to rummage around in your thoughts, but she had never heard of him interfering in something as it happened. And then she realized what it must be.

“Maker’s breath,” she said, her head dropping back onto the pillow with a thud. “It’s the cats.”

“ _Cats_?”

“The armoury keeps them to keep the rats from the leather,” said Cassandra reasonably. “They sleep with me, sometimes.”

“Do they,” said Lavellan in a neutral voice.

“They’re very affectionate,” said Cassandra. “Just ignore them. They aren’t used to—to movement in my bed, so I’m sure they’ll go away.”

She resolutely turned her attention back to the Inquisitor.

*          *          *

“Just how many cats _are_ there?” demanded Lavellan, a little later. There was an excess of purring from the foot of the bedroll, which was becoming distinctly… crowded.

“I don’t know,” Cassandra admitted. “They seem to come and go, and sometimes there are kittens.” She heard Lavellan sigh, and hoped that the Inquisitor didn’t dislike cats; their uncomplicated affection had been a great comfort to her on many lonely nights, even if they did sometimes distract her from her prayers.

Right now she thought it best to distract the Inquisitor from the cats. She shifted her weight over Lavellen, insinuating her leg between those of the other woman, and kissed her again, beginning to let her hand slide down across ribs and belly. Lavellan’s hips rose against hers, rocking, and she had begun to make small sounds in her throat. 

The purring was getting louder. Cassandra felt an inquisitive paw tap her buttocks, followed by another. The cat was climbing up on her, presumably to settle down to sleep. “Get _off_ ,” she hissed at it, twitching her hips to dislodge it.

Below her, she felt a subtle shaking. “Movement discourages them, you said?” The shaking intensified, and she realized that Lavellan was laughing, laughing silently but also laughing harder than the Seeker had ever seen her laugh before, laughing with an abandon that made her whole body shake. She felt mildly affronted and then thought with resignation, _but I suppose it_ is _ridiculous_. There they were, two mature women, trying to make love for the first time—in silence—with as much passion as if they were barely past puberty, in an armoury full of workers, and under siege by affectionate cats. She felt happiness well up in herself, could not remember when she had last felt so free and relaxed, was unexpectedly overcome with laughter herself, and finally collapsed fully onto the Inquisitor, clutching her helplessly and gasping for breath into her collarbone.

“Perhaps,” said Lavellan, when they'd gotten themselves back under more control, “this would be better continued in my quarters. They are slightly more private, though it seems that tonight it is possible that there will not be _anywhere_ that will be without disruptions. Unless you’d prefer to stay here?”

Cassandra thought of the Inquisitor’s bed, dwarven designed and rather overblown in an angular sort of way, but also _big_ , with room for all sorts of activities and explorations, and far, far away from listeners. Would she prefer to stay here?

_No, no, and no._

**Author's Note:**

> What’s behind this story:  
> 1\. I think that people probably often respond with arousal to erotic triggers that don’t match stereotypical expectations. Without the context to understand them, such reactions can be baffling.  
> 2\. I think that Cassandra, experiencing such a reaction, might well go off in a totally hare-brained direction in an attempt to explain it to herself, simply because it doesn’t match her established understandings and self-definition.  
> 3\. I doubt that anyone else would be nearly as clueless, though the Inquisitor would likely be pretty wary of forcing her to confront what was happening and would, up to a point, let things proceed at their own pace.  
> 4\. Good sex is often full of laughter.  
> Mega-thanks are owed to my partner, who had a number of great suggestions when beta-reading—and whose response to a question inspired the cats.   
> 5\. An addition: [Cassandra and cats](http://skyboneharper.tumblr.com/post/114951568839/cassandra-sleeps), just because.


End file.
